Bates has Orange Whip, while Colby has the Dazzlin' Asses. To the south are Bowdoin's Stoned Clowns. In Vermont are the Middlebury Pranksters.

So, the names of some nearby Ultimate Frisbee college teams prove that the sport still gets its ya-yas out by flaunting a late-'60s counterculture attitude. Yet, says Adam Miller '09 of Seattle, Wash., who played on the U.S. squad that won the World Junior Championships last month, Ultimate has slowly "evolved from kind of a hippie sport into a competitive sport with very good athletes."

An influx of athletes who've played other sports like soccer and basketball — sports that feature high-end cuts and moves — has ratcheted up the quality of play, but the laid-back attitude remains. "It's often nice guys from other sports who try Ultimate because they don't like the cutthroat nature" of the programs they've experienced, Miller says. "They know that the culture of Ultimate is really important: You play hard but don't lose perspective."

Miller, a former high school soccer player, revels in Ultimate's combination of athleticism and sportsmanship (the games are self-officiated). "The best play in Ultimate is when you both lay out" — dive headlong — "for a disc, one of you gets it, and the other guy gets up and says something like, 'Great job. That was sweet.'"

Whether Ultimate grows into the next big team sport or fades away like pole sitting, it's already standard fare in high schools and colleges nationally. In New England, some 60 colleges and 90 high schools have teams reporting scores to the region's major association, the Boston Ultimate Disc Alliance. "And we expect there are a large number of high school teams with no reported scores," according to BUDA president Geoff Doerre.  

And, the sport is played in 42 countries, with the recent World Juniors, held in Massachusetts, drawing teams from the United States, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Australia, Israel, Great Britain and Colombia.

The challenge for Ultimate enthusiasts is to refine their sport while retaining what they love about it. As Miller considers Orange Whip (the name is from a John Candy quote in The Blues Brothers), he says, "we have to make the choice: either to be more competitive — the way practices are run and the number of tournaments we attend — or stay being loose."